Golden Globes 2021: Sound of Metal
Hi! Before we jump in, I just want to define some terms:
Deaf with a capital D means someone who has been deaf their entire lives or became deaf before they learned to talk. Deaf with a lowercase d can refer to anyone with severe hearing loss. This distinction is important to many people in the Deaf/deaf community because people who are born deaf experience English as a second language and see more noticeable differences between their experiences in the Deaf/deaf and hearing communities. ASL stands for American Sign Language and is the language signed by Deaf/deaf people in the United States, whereas other countries and regions have their own sign languages, such as BSL, or British Sign Language. A cochlear implant is a surgically implanted neuroprosthetic device that can provide a person with hearing loss a moderate sense of sound by bypassing the normal acoustic hearing processes and replacing them with electric signals that stimulate the auditory nerve.
Okay, I think those are all the terms I need to get out of the way. Let’s jump in.
One of the best courses I took in college was an elective called Sign Language through Pop Music. It was taught be another student who was Deaf and wore cochlear implants, so he was fluent in English and American Sign Language (ASL). Each week he would turn off his implants and lead most of the class entirely through sign and we would learn new vocabulary that would later be applied to a song. For example, week one we learned letters and numbers and then applied it to “ABC” by the Jackson Five.
Another facet of the course was attending events in the Deaf/deaf community in Pittsburgh and watching documentaries about Deaf/deaf culture, which included the debates surrounding cochlear implants and how they can potentially reinforce the idea that deafness is a medical disability rather than a social one. To explain very briefly, the medical model sees disability as a problem to be fixed, which, in the case of deafness, would be implants, and the social model sees the fault in society rather than the individual. The social fix would be widespread use of ASL interpreters, closed captioning, live captioning, talk to text computer and phones, more mixed ASL and speaking school systems… the list goes on. This applies to all disabilities as well, not just deafness and hearing impairments.
Sadly, I’ve fallen out of practice with ASL (which is something I probably should remedy considering it’s still listed as a special skill on my resume… oops), but it has come up through out the years in my work with children and young adults with various disabilities, so I haven’t lost it entirely. Unfortunately, I haven’t found solid at home language learning resources for ASL, but hopefully I will be able to take an in-person course once those opportunities become available to me again.
[Edit: I just logged into Skillshare (which I definitely signed up for a free trial for at some point and forgot about it… oops, again) and there are tons of ASL courses! I will make a point of checking those out. Moving on!]
Anyway, this was my background with ASL and the Deaf/deaf community when I sat down to watch Sound of Metal, the story of a heavy metal drummer, Ruben (Riz Ahmed), who loses almost 100% of his hearing very quickly. After finding out the cochlear implant surgery can cost anywhere from $40,000 to $80,000 dollars, his girlfriend and creative partner Lou (Olivia Cookie) finds a rehab facility specifically for members of the Deaf/deaf community. Fearing that his depression surrounding his hearing loss will lead him to relapse into addiction, Lou insists Ruben go to the rehab center while she spends some time with her dad in Paris.
While in the rehab facility, run by Joe (Paul Raci), a Vietnam vet who lost his hearing in the war, Ruben slowly but surely befriends the other people in the home, learns sign language from Diane (Lauren Ridloff) and her students at the Deaf school, and even finds a way to reconnect to music by feeling the vibrations of the drums. In a particularly poignant scene, he takes one of Diane’s rambunctious students outside during a performance at school. They lie on a metal slide together on the playground, and slowly pass rhythms back and forth.
However, while Ruben is assimilating into his new community, he is also secretly selling off his belongings in order to afford his implants. When he returns to the rehab facility after the surgery, Joe tells him he has violated the agreements he made when he arrived and the trust of the entire community, as they do not see deafness as a disability that needs to be fixed. He asks Ruben to leave immediately. As Ruben struggles to adjust to his brain’s new method of hearing, he flies to Paris to see Lou, who has also changed greatly over their months apart. In the final moments of the film, Ruben leaves Lou’s Paris apartment, finds a place to sit in the city, and turns off his implants.
There are a lot of really admirable things about Sound of Metal, chief among them Riz Ahmed’s nominated performance as Ruben. Darius Marder, who wrote and directed the film, apparently waited thirteen years before he found the right actor who was also dedicated enough for the role. Prior to filming, Ahmed spent eight months preparing for the part. His preparation included two hours a day of ASL, two hours a day of drumming, two hours with a personal trainer, and the rest of the day with his acting coach. I’m gonna go ahead and say it- that’s a more intense schedule than a year at the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama. If one of my friends disagrees with me we can argue about this later.
Ruben’s desperation as he loses his hearing is so visceral and embodied, and as the audience sees Lou’s fear as Ruben unravels we feel it intensely as well. It never feels melodramatic or overplayed, even though it is very intense and at times difficult to watch unfold. This is only amplified by the brilliant sound design by Nicolas Becker. For the vast majority of the film, except for a few moments deliberately to provide contrast, the audience only hears what Ruben is able to hear. It creates a truly immersive and empathy building experience, most intensely when he finally gets his implants in and realizes that the world will never sound exactly how it used to. The terror in Ruben’s eyes as he realizes he may have just made a horrible mistake combined with Becker’s tinnitus inducing sound design puts the tense music combined with jump scares of horror movies to shame.
This storytelling device even carries over to the closed captioning. I am a passionate reader of my film and television (I could write a whole blog post another time about how much I love captions), and captioning was only provided when Ruben was able to understand something. While Ruben was still learning sign language and couldn’t follow what was going on during conversations at the rehab facility, there were no captions, and when he was losing his hearing, there were only captions indicating what he could hear, even if that meant the caption read something like “mumbling” or “incoherent sounds.” This also simulated the experience that we were learning sign language along with him.
Sadly, there is no best sound (or best captions) category at the Golden Globes, but if Nicolas Becker doesn’t win it at the Academy Awards, truly, what is the point of the category. In terms of actually possible nominations, I’m pretty surprised Darius Marder wasn’t nominated for best screenplay. That being said, the ending of the film was a bit of a mess, from when Ruben leaves rehab to the end. It all happens very quickly and does take a slight turn for melodrama. While the deep sadness and betrayal Joe feels at Ruben’s actions is resonant and heartbreaking, Ruben’s journey to Paris and struggle to reintegrate to hearing society doesn’t merit the same depth and exploration as his early trials in the rehab facility. Additionally, the film clearly has a strong point of view and it feels very clear that Ruben made a mistake in going through with the surgery. While I don’t believe that films need to be unbiased towards their characters and their actions, and indeed, they rarely are, I think this story would have been served better with a hint of moral ambiguity, especially since the debate around cochlear implants in the Deaf/deaf community is so intense and full of nuance. In my opinion, the film comes down pretty hard on one side of the argument.
Anyway, sorry for just giving away the entire movie. I still think it’s worth a watch just to watch Riz Ahmed and Olivia Cooke as two more Brits coming to steal American jobs. It’s really ridiculous how good they are at accents. We’ll never catch up.